Letter
by irenadel
Summary: From the pen of Toreadore Antitribu Nora Griffin. An account of her life and works for her latest flame.


How long can one sit on a stool, going over forgotten notes, discarded photos and horrid nightmares veiled as memories? How long can I keep silent with no one to listen, no one to see meaning in the words? Only once. Only twice… no, only once. Impressions melting into one another. Ripped past. Listen, no listen!

Oh how poor Nora drowns! How she struggles with the current and its deadly call. For it calls, with great ease, come to me, come and you'll be mine, come and I will kill you. Come.

No, not yet.

Sweet, petite Nora still wishes to speak (blot that) to sing of Ireland and the tiny home which contained an eternity of horrid, treasured memories.

How shall she start (could never quite trust my pen, bear with me)? Perhaps in that unclear night in which she was probably blinded by the light as she came out of her mother's warm, sticky womb. Mother, what did you think of that perhaps 7-pound piece of flesh you held? Did you hold me mother?

I knew what Peter thought of me. You see mother, he told me so; now do not be mad mom, we weren't keeping it from you. Nora and Peter waited as long as they could, but you didn't want to listen. As you never listened the hoarse moans coming from your son's throat and your daughter's bedroom. I made noise too mother, I whined and pleaded and sobbed sporadically until it was over. Oh you heard all right! You just didn't listen.

Still we waited by your door, four-year-old Nora and fifteen-year-old Peter. He got his reward in the end. After all, he'd been waiting longer than I.

Poor, sweet, subnormal Peter! Did he know how his mother ogled at him? Her strange adoration being a light which barely reached me.

You had judged and scowled at those children from Dunrobbin village who called him "Griffin" and took him away from you. You had slapped and yelled at Nora who stole away his heart.

I didn't mean to mother, really. I couldn't see his wild adolescent look touching the nether regions of my too tight dress.

He always said he liked your skin and the silkiness of your hair, mother. He might have been yours forever, in that dumb, harsh way of his. But the town's people murmured sweet, insidious praise of your daughter.

Oh, white Nora with ivory skin! Oh, red-hair Nora with elven curls! Don't turn on the lights beloved! Let me touch, let me smell, let me taste your perfumed skin and satin hair. Let my hand trail down, lower, lower still and loose itself in the tight folds of your nightgown. Pretty Nora, beautiful Nora do not whine; I am not hurting you little whore. But you are, oh, so gorgeous!

Was I proud, even as a child, of being able to cause rapture in your pubescent son and his friends? What did Nora Griffin think of her beauty?

Nothing. There was nothing there at all, as I had thought. No drooling, animalistic leper staring from the mirror. Nora stop imagining things.

But Nora is painfully thin and her red hair never stays right. Her face is too broad, yet angular, yet sharp to the touch. It makes extensive plains of her cheeks and steep valleys of her cheekbones that fall into the seas of her green eyes. Her lashes too black and solemn for her secular white. The neck is bony and chokes her as food does. The backbones of her nape protruding in strange high angles down to her spine. The legs are two curvy child legs that should have disappeared at puberty. The hips too wide so that they knock things over and her mouth, a delicate mound of real flesh among the marble structures. She is little more than a rachitic child.

No, don't look. There aren't any mirrors in the house anyway.

What other things can I remember? I'm not sure. Perhaps because the days were still different from each other. Perhaps because I could still firmly grasp the promise of Dublin half murmured in dreams.

Oh, so different! Oh, so unexpected. Between each scream of "I hate you", Peter, mother's devouring love was mingled with mine. You were my playmate, my accomplice when we escaped seawards. I had no claim on you. Peter you were strong. Peter you were mother's virile dream. Oh, Peter, you were dead so young!

Nora stood besides your pine coffin, still feeling wet, still feeling drowned. Still one voice persisted, dull, pathetic, among the cacophony. The one voice that had urged us away from the river. Mother's voice.

I'm sorry. I loved you Peter… I did.

And Nora clutched at her head and screamed and kicked. She did not murmur anymore. I knew no longer where to turn. The indulging smiles were grotesque mocking of our lamentation. Their soft glow was quite empty when you stared hard enough. She shouted and vociferated her pain, her guilt, but no one was there to hear. They were too busy smiling. When the glow faded and they heard, her panic was cheapened into hysterics.

So I spoke of my pain no longer, still I devised a hundred other topics which to bring forth in aging cheerful tones. Listen, no listen! Talk, talk, talk! Drown away that silence which threatens to swallow me. Don't let me be ignored. I'm here, here, hear, hear…

I'm not.

Again, listen to the creaking waters eight-year-old Nora. They promise peace, as that given to Peter.

I don't want to die.

Sing then, bring forth your cool, soothing soprano and drown the call. The inescapable call. That which came from the river, the rope, the scissors mom used to cut my hair off.

I was happy mother. I was. You were mine for once. Never mind that we had only thin, limpid clothes. Never mind that food was scarce. You knew I didn't like it even then. It choked me and disgusted me, as my new sustenance now does.

Don't let them notice the ribs under my choking gowns. Don't let them notice the rotting food behind the shed. Don't let them hear me cry. I don't want them to come. I don't want them to misunderstand. I don't want you to notice I was crying mom. Mom, why didn't you notice I was crying?

I needed it mom. To hear the voices in town murmuring praise of "that girl's voice".

Sing, said the call now, live and die, and sing of it.

Make them praise you, make them admire you… and later on, make them want you.

First, Peter. Second, Adam Templeton.

Yes mother, he wanted, craved me. Desperately. Mindlessly. My skin, my odor, my touch and my, oh, so sweet voice. My, oh, so sweet genius.

I would have let him have me, if only he would let me live.

Mother, I needed that too. I had to grasp my life with teeth and nails. I stayed, mom, I stayed and cried once more:

"I want to live! Why can't I leave?"

Want me even more Adam; want me so much that you escape at night furtively with your precious green-eyed cargo.

Bitter freedom. Hard-won freedom. Furtive freedom.

Wait Nora, a new master awaits you.

Beloved, fanged, monster. My one savior. My one hero. Betray me and sink those sharp teeth into the skin of my under-jaw. Bring forth the bruised holes in my wrists, my arms, my shoulders, my thighs. Sink me into those fevered dreams of yours.

Let your pretty pet raise her voice against the silence of a full, crowded theater. Let her spew forth heresies of love and hate and death and despair, made of her own genius.

Come softly at midday, to break that slim body. To brutally caress her navel and nape. Tell me not to turn the lights on and you'll be more mine than I was ever yours.

It didn't matter, anyway. I had so much now. I had my three glorious years of fame. I brought tears to their eyes Nora, I did. It was too much, too strong, too intense, as I stood there; the light melting the white makeup I didn't need. I trembled when my firm step took me there. My fragile, vertical frame shivered to the tip of each short, rusted hair when I voiced my music. You swore I would collapse when all had come out, Adam.

Still the mirrors persisted.

Oh, Adam! There was never a time when Nora wasn't beautiful… except perhaps when she looked into mirror…

You donned up heavy, lace and velvet dresses. You, petite, thin to asphyxia Nora. How did you stand with those on, sinking in fine wool and silk, fighting to withstand their weight on those fragile kissable shoulders?

Easy Adam: I didn't.

Excruciating, wild, drunken three years. Your slave, Adam was the most blissful mortal in those beloved years. Amado niño, I graciously thank you for them… nonetheless I hate you. You filthy wretched face in my mirror. You horrid fairy-tale villain with sweaty palms. You trapped me, you betrayed me, you reasserted the claustrophobic darkness, YOU MONSTER! Drained me, filled me, reshaped me, Adam. You condemned me to the mirrors forever.

But immortality gave me more than you were ready to fight.

I wonder if you ever believed young, parted-thigh Nora could stake and burn you with such a precision.

But perhaps you want to know what blood tasted like to me. The first night: warm, sizzling, sweet, all consuming, all-forgiving. The second: ah, the second night was not the same… and it has never been the same. If I tell you, that I find no pleasure in it, would you believe me? It is horrid and sticky as I can feel it crawling through my insides when I am done. My foul bloated belly was just another burden to carry.

The hopelessness of it hit me so suddenly that I wasn't ready for it. Even among the fiendishly free monsters of my new life, I, Nora Griffin with delicate shoulders, was not free. Thanks God I will not live forever. The body and the body and again the body. With aging pants in between closed lips I screamed and pleaded with the lidless eyes that stared at Nora. Look, look; don't look at her, look at me, I am Nora. Not that thin fragile creature with aching limbs. For God's sake! It's meat, dead foul meat! It's a dead husk you're staring at!

Look at me please, dark keeper, twisted fiend, sweet rebel brother! That's not Nora.

Disgust, deep, slimy disgust at those ogling eyes. Sick, you're all sick! You're not even worth hating! You stripped away my shame, myself, with your desperate glances and sweaty confessions. You thought I couldn't feel your subtle violence, your brutal discretion as you pointed me out… forever out. How dare you say you love me without knowing me! How dare you assume that I do not hear your heated comments crawling between my legs! I feel raped; left alone shivering in the haven you had made for me. Defiled.

Stained fragmented face in those portraits you made of me, Jean! Tired jaded legs showing beneath translucent skirts in those photographs, Francisco took. I always took care to hide those.

Nora, Nora, Nora, you are beautiful Nora. You are lovely and fascinating, you white skinned, blood lipped Nora. The sadder, the more miserable you are the more exquisite. Even when you skewed all food as a child and grew thinner than usual.

Let me tear my face off! Let me slash at the crystal-clear eyes with a broken pencil. I hate you Nora. I'll kill you one of these days.

Why must my world be so banal and disgusting? Why can't I reach that other place? I have not chosen these chains, let me free of them. I wish someone understood; someone besides the Pandora I lost too soon. She who had seen the tears, not the eyes; she who had listened to the words not the voice.

For an instant, for a flash, Nora was Nora and not the nymph of an artiste's portraits. She was composer, singer, informer, poetess, traitor and more. I was apt pupil to you Pandora; as you taught me to twist and modulate my voice to my heart's desire. Nora's voice was truly hers now.

I could confront their fevered glances if I had something that was mine. If the quiet hum of eternity swallowed each note… they were still mine.

I was so afraid of frightening her away. Pandora, even to you, I dare not speak of the dark toils of my mutilated soul. But the songs and music were enough for a time and little Nora grasped happiness for one heartbreaking instant again.

  I could not retain you though, and you escaped my hag's claws. It was enough for me, I had already learned how to make prisoners with my own chains.

The rapture, the fever, the passion and need in their loins where mine to shape and reshape, at my taste. They would give her anything for one kiss: their time, their lives and their souls for one kiss, a single devouring kiss. Ha! Touché! It was mine now!

Though each glance sickened me… I still wanted them and needed them; as I had needed the praise. So long to realize I was asking for it. So long to realize I could not live without it. Its vast complexity frightened me as I kept it inside… eating away my guts. I couldn't let the admiration slip away and leave me empty. I needed to be wanted but…only for my beauty? Only? Oh Gods, the self-loathing of playing by your rules!

Amidst the plans and conspiracies, the happiness and cheerfulness, only when I talked too little or laughed too loudly was anything ever suspected. How good an actor I had become that my closest companions hadn't noticed a single thing.

I cried again and again alone as I had always done, but it did not purge me from the pain. I slept too much too long, they said. The less Nora saw of them the happier she was. She drank too little, also, without caring if she was half-dead, if there was nothing important to do.

Nora, why did you try so hard to end your misery when you knew you didn't have the courage to?

You even sleep-walked to the window and nearly opened the blinds letting the burning sun in. You couldn't do it even then, you pathetic hypocrite.

But I was alive and whole still. And I could see the world was more than a village in which to marry, have children and repeat the same routine year after year till the sun and Northern wind shriveled my face prematurely. No, there had to be more than that.

For once Nora had all she had ever dreamed for: warm water, clothes that actually fitted her… she can recall without the photographs, the too short, too tight translucent dresses of her childhood. They had choked her and strangely kept her upright despite their limpness. She has many a pictures of those times. The only one I keep out, though, is that in which I appear in the background and Peter in front.

Always on the brink of something wonderful, Nora… never quite to the other side.

Nora was afraid when her breasts began to grow; Nora was afraid when body-hair sprouted and she felt it would cheapen her till she was no longer "pretty"; Nora was afraid to say "no". But when her voyage to America became a reality, she was joyous. Free at last of dusted, decaying Europe.

Nora was for America and America was for Nora. I could withstand the cold, fishy hands of my custodian in turn or the stinking reptilian breath of the next to come, if only they would herd me around Mexico, Chile, Ecuador, Canada, Brazil and the long sought Union that housed so many of my kin. I could very well lie by Vallejo praying to any one who might be hearing that today he didn't want me any closer, if I would walk around San Cristobal alone and oblivious once night had fallen. I could throw my arms around his neck, pretend I was in love, pretend it was real. I could open my mouth to his cold worm of a tongue and bear the stench of his servitude as long as I didn't have to face his master.

_I love you Vallejo!_

Mentira

_I cannot be without you!_

Mentira

_There is no other but you!_

Mentira

I grow weary of it. I am exhausted and cannot go on, Vallejo, I'm not enjoying being stuffed with you and I'm not in love. Whatever in the world made you think you were any different from the others. That I told you so? Then you are truly no different from the others. I'm sorry, really. How do you know I'm not pretending tonight? That's the point; you never know.

Disappear now, without trace as you have done countless times before. And what of those you have left behind? It is harder when you know they'll remember you _forever. Perhaps you may still catch a glimpse of one in days to come. Do they hate me now? I would. Still some could never let go and these truly disgusted me, because I always feel them watching me from the corner of their sight. I can never escape the lidless eye. But when they hate me it's even worse, because I do not want to be hated._

No more, no more, I cannot remember them all. They were too alike.

What I can remember… the acrid smell of cigars and drinks, strong male sent defiling my clothes. The sent of mortal blood that has always faintly repelled me perhaps because I cannot resist it. The sight of ruddy mortal males with a slight edge in their own hunger. _How nice of you to come! It wouldn't be the same without you._ No, it wouldn't be the same without the young, female editor of the _Providence Tribune_. It could never be the same.

Smile, nod, then smile again. I know the dance by heart. It has changed little in the last few years and it's easier to fool mortals. But as my sire might have once said: the trick is not in the steps but in the performance of them.

I have always been a supreme performer. Howard, on the other hand, was never quite so good. That, I could see even through the haze of the smoke and the brilliance of the false smiles. That, I could feel even as he clumsily attempted to kiss my hand. But he was, indeed a gentleman. More so, than many of the night creatures whom I have known.

I am no vampire. I am no drinker of blood. I am only Nora… nothing more.

I am no fool. I am no recluse. I am Howard… and nothing more.

Ah, but Nora gave a fight that night; one she was to loose, no doubt. To speak of the stars and their movement, and the distant lands that might be. To speak of god and the devil knowing they do not exist. To become mortal for a few hours again. To laugh as she does and speak as she did. It was worth coming to Providence if I can have all this.

I don't really want to go, Howard, but old habits die hard and I still must do what I don't want to now and then. You are right, it is late. You are right, I am tired. It seems I can't speak my mind as well.

And when he suggested he should escort me home, I came crashing back down. How many times before have you heard that one? I could have laughed if I'd dared. But he'd given Nora a good time, why not?

So we walked together through what was left of the chilly night. Dry cold. The sort which weathers away both lips and cheeks. I tried to tell him that; where I had live and of the salty wind atop the cliffs. How it was cold and scalding, that wind… and gray too. I said: the sea is gray, but the land is green. He remarked my eyes were green. I laughed.

He spoke of auburn sunsets and twilight and the New England he adores. This land which would always be here, unaltered by time or man. His one link to the past. I laughed again.

He agreed it was cold.

Such a cold that it numbed my senses so that when Howard Phillips Lovecraft departed with another half-blown kiss to the hand and not even a small attempt at being invited in, I took a full fifteen minutes to realize what had happened.

It took me five months more, to actually begin to look for his name in the papers. I began to think constantly of the talk we had. It troubled me somehow, the way he'd spoken. He some part of me given voice.

I don't expect any of our kind to understand… but Nora feels… small.

She is standing in a vast place with the velvet sky above and around her. Unmesurable and inescapable all around her. No sound of echo, no movement save the wind. No life, no death, just… and Nora is infinitely small. Still she suffocates for lack of air, for lack of everything.

If they could feel as Nora feels, the immensity of everything. If they _knew_ what place we have in the grand scheme of things, they wouldn't wish to live forever. But I do, though I know I won't. I wish to see, to feel, to taste, to be everything. To hold my arms open for whatever it is that awaits us Howard… you and me.

So much for immortality, Adam. It doesn't matter to me anymore. I have always known I would die, ever since I was born.

I forget now and again, though it always comes back. I'm beginning to wonder if you ever forgot like that. We are so alike, that perhaps you did.

I wonder if I'll ever be able to reach the lower notes. Perhaps that was one of the things Howard did not like about Nora. After all, he never found echo where I did.

By now, I do suppose the reader has realized what happened. I never intended it to be a mystery. I've had enough of intrigue as it is.

I kept thinking of him, wishing for another chance, another night I wrote to him and he answered, so our little connection began and though he frightened me, he was also a source of great delight to me.

I read his work when it was printed keeping as critical as possible, and when he wrote "The Music of Erich Zann" I laughed at his notion of what music was. And when he sent me "The Outsider" I cried, oh, so softly. And I wrote back thanking you for not writing a dedication in the printing. Thanks God, no one knew me so well as you! Thanks God, no one could guess Nora in your writing!

Howard never heard Nora's music, but he read the lyrics and that was enough. He let me dance with him and that was enough. I could make him laugh and that was enough.

Till he sent me the letter telling me he was married. I never wrote back.

Why, why can't I ever have what I want? Why must I be stuffed full with what I do not desire?

He wrote a few more letters, some I read, some I didn't. I never wrote back, I didn't want to look back and still I can't help it. My eyes are on yours across great distances. I wish to scrap away the flesh and bone along with the damned blood. I wish to be light and ethereal wind, to slip through the walls invisible to all. Ah, but if only I could, I would lie besides you and kiss your prominent nose and your wide eyes, touch with one air like finger the withered texture of your thin lips.

I tried so hard, not to forget, but to remember the love that had once consumed me.

Those two years it lasted… the most agonizing, anxious, numb, desperate, heartrending years of my life. To be aware of the time which is lost is the most oppressive of all knowledge… or so I thought then. Ah, but to love a mortal is too sweet to give up! No, not the love of a mortal, but the love for a mortal, for Howard and had always known who I was. Did you not always see the fangs, Howard? And the blood Howard?

How, oh, how did you know all of which is hidden? Was that your fall as it has been mine? Did the light of the lamp burn you out like a candle? It burns me.

And still… and still…

You know the darkness swallows us both. So what?

Your eyes are glassed. What now? Shall I allow your genius to leave? What is it Howard? I cannot hear you. Yet how can I condemn you to the darkness? I feed on it, more surely than on blood. But you? Shall I give you the blood? Why shouldn't I? But it's too late now. Did you call to me in that last breath? Or was it to your wife, you bastard; that wife who left you in two years time? Your mother? Your lovely aunt? How tired and sad she seems now when the doctors come to take your corpse.

I loved you, you know. But it would have been folly to give you the blood; as it was folly to give me the knowledge. Now you leave me. And they say you have no heir.

So the great questions are answered with his death? So I might have expected.

I received a package from him that very night. Something he had had to leave behind. Something he hoped I would care for. Hoped. The Lamp of Alhazred as he might put it. A drop of ink in his eternal pen. The lamp that I'd suppose fiction all his life. The lamp that had given him his wish with all it carried. It gave me mine too.

I will not tell you what it was, Beckett, as I have told you all else. Neither will I speak of why it left me torpid for months hereafter. Or why I still dream nightmares of it in my waking hours. And again all comfort is in sleep where none might touch me.

I have told you all else, but this is mine forever.

Here is the story of poor, doomed Nora. I hope you have enjoyed my little chronicle, though I fear it'll be over before you begin it. Nora begins and ends with death, and the cycles it has brought me.

If it is of any consequence, I do indeed feel sorry for all that has ever happened, and I thank you for asking this of me. Perhaps one day there'll be more time. Though the call has drowned it all away, I still don't want to die.

With all love and readiness

Nora Griffin


End file.
